Saturday, April 19, 2014

#InMediasRes and a fitting "closure"

Photo credit: Anthony Karam

One of the most recurring themes of #InMediasRes was surveillance, seeing and being seen (I am one of the ones who drifted off in my work into an analysis of the conflict of identity - specifically collective memory and national identity - but that's digressing), so yesterday when the "Vero Modca" store performance finished at Station Beirut and as I was gathering my backpack to leave I was approached by a man to whom I had been just introduced some 10 minutes earlier.
It turned out he was Anthony Karam.
And it turned out Anthony took a photo of a man walking on the street earlier in the day.
And it turned out the man being observed on the street was none else than myself.
Asking Anthony why he would take a photo of a perfect stranger on the street (in an act of unofficial surveillance) he said there was something "compelling about a man walking purposefully on the street holding "something" on his back" (that would be my colourful special edition Eastpak backpack).
Since one of the premises of In Medias Res was "no ends, no beginnings" "only middles", the photo marks such a fitting "closure" (not "end") to that roller coaster ride this show has been for (practically) all participants (but mostly initiator Miha Vipotnik).
So there, my photo was taken "in the midst of things" on the final day of #InMediasRes - coincidence? Or an ironic act of cyclical art?